WMYD
Not to be confused with WMYD, the MyNetworkTV affiliate in Detroit, Michigan. WMYD,' '''Virtual Channel 21, is a primary MyTV affiliate (with secondary affiliation with MyNetworkTV) that serves the Isle Delfino, Mushroom Kingdom region. The station is owned by Koopa Troop Communications. History The station was founded on March 8, 1982, with grant of a construction permit issued by the FCC to build a new full-power television station on UHF channel 21 to serve Isle Delfino. The original owner Frank Scott, an early independent casino pioneer in Las Vegas, named his company Dres Media Inc., and chose '''WJEN', for the station's call letters in December 1982. In August 1984, after a couple of extensions to the original construction permit, the station applied for its license to cover construction and went on the air under a Program Test Authority. WJEN was an independent station branding itself as Vusic 21, and at first, aired only music videos. In addition to its over-the-air broadcast on channel 21, the station was carried by Prime Cable on channel 2. The first music video aired on the station, was "Video Killed the Radio Star". In mid-1985, WJEN began to introduce a few classic television programs, and also began airing World Class Championship Wrestling, a popular one-hour wrestling program originating from Dallas, Texas. WJEN was given an FCC license on April 11, 1986. By 1987, the station had replaced the music videos with more conventional fare, such as sitcoms, dramas, movies, and sports. In May 1994, Dres Media sold the station to Channel 21, LP, a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Lambert Broadcasting for $2.85 million. On January 16, 1995, the station became an affiliate of the new United Paramount Network. One of the most successful turnaround stories in broadcasting, Channel 21 L.P. sold the station just two years later to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in April 1997 for $87 million. Sinclair created the company WJEN Licensee to manage the station's license. On March 1, 1998, Sinclair changed the station's affiliation to The WB Television Network and on May 27, 1998, changed the station's call letters to WBID, to reflect its new affiliation. The station moved to channel 12 on the local cable provider in 1999, when Cox Communications acquired Prime Cable. On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner announced that The WB and UPN would be shut down that September and have their higher-rated programs merged onto a new jointly owned network called The CW. On February 22, News Corporation announced that it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV. This new service, which would be a sister network to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give stations affiliated with UPN and The WB that were not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates another option besides becoming independent stations, as well as to compete against The CW. Sinclair chose to put The CW on the company's other Isle Delfino area station, the then-independent WDBT, and chose to acquire the MyNetworkTV affiliation for WBID. In June 2006, anticipating the start of MyNetworkTV, Sinclair changed the station's call letters yet again to WMYD. On September 3, 2014, Sinclair announced the purchase of NBC affiliate WNPA (channel 3) from Valley Broadcasting Company for $120 million. As Sinclair already owns WMYD and WDBT, the company will sell the license assets (though not the programming) of one of the three stations to comply with FCC ownership restrictions, with the divested station's programming being relocated to the other stations. On November 1, 2014, however, Sinclair announced that the company would instead sell WMYD to Koopa Troop Communications, which owns WLFE-TV (channel 46) via its subsidiary Koopa Troop Stations.; WDBT and WNPA themselves remain under Sinclair ownership. The transaction was finalized on October 30. On September 22, 2016, Berfield/Willis Broadcast Corporation, owner of WWUH-CD, announced that WWUH would become charter affiliate of the co-owned YesNet television network. WMYD then announced that the station would become primary affiliate of MyTV, which WWUH-CD had been affiliated since the network's launch in 2009, effective November 12. The switch occurred on that date and MyNetworkTV programming delayed to 11:00pm until 1:00am. Digital television Digital channels The station's digital channel is multiplexed: Analog-to-digital conversion WBID-DT was granted a permit to construct its digital facilities on November 24, 2000. Technical difficulties delayed construction of the full-power facilities, requiring extensions of the construction permit, and on November 8, 2002, WBID was granted Special Temporary Authority (STA) to construct a low-power facility in order to comply with the FCC deadline for commencing digital broadcasting while the full-power facilities were still being built. The station, now known as WMYD-DT, completed construction of its full-power digital facilities in January 2007, but as of April 2007, has not yet been granted a license. In 2006, the FCC required each station with a digital companion channel to select which station it would continue to use after the end of the transition period. WMYD-DT selected channel 10 as its final digital channel and returned the channel 21 license to the FCC. WMYD continues to use channel 21 as its virtual channel per the ATSC standards for PSIP. Regular programming was dropped on February 18, 2009 and the station participated in the "Analog Nightlight" program for two weeks, explaining how to switch to digital reception. Newscasts In 2003, WMYD (as WBID) established a news department and began airing a primetime newscast at 10 p.m. It was part of Sinclair's centralized News Central operation that was based at the company's headquarters on Beaver Dam Road in Hunt Valley, Maryland]. National and international news segments, weather forecasts and some sports segments originated from the company's Hunt Valley facility, while local news and sports segments were based at WDBT/WBID's studios. The news department was shared with then-independent station WDBT (channel 33), which aired its own local newscast at 7 p.m. It also aired "The Point", a one-minute conservative political commentary, that was required to be broadcast on all Sinclair-owned stations with newscasts. The news department was shut down at the beginning of March 2006, as were the majority of Sinclair's news operations under the News Central format. WBID later entered into a news share agreement with NBC affiliate WNPA to produce a nightly 10 p.m. newscast for channel 21. The newscast debuted on April 6, 2006, under the title News 3 at 10 on The WB Delfino and was later renamed to News 3 at 10 on My21 Delfino following the September switch to MyNetworkTV. The program was discontinued on December 15, 2006, and moved to WDBT the following Monday. That newscast was also discontinued on September 28, 2009 (only to be revived on WWUH-CD one month later), but was revived in 2015. Category:Channel 21 Category:MyNetworkTV affiliated stations Category:MyTV affiliated stations Category:Television channels and stations established in 1984 Category:Koopa Troop Communications Category:Former WB network affiliates Category:Former WB affiliates Category:Isle Delfino Category:Mushroom Kingdom Category:Dual-affiliated stations Category:MeTV subchannel-only network affiliates